Domino® Sugar tips to make the best brownies ever (2024)

Along with cookies and cakes, brownies are one of the most popular baked goods. Their rich, chocolatey goodness is baked right in, and made even better with the use of quality ingredients. Corporate Chef Eleonora shares five tips that will help to take your next batch to another level, as well as some chef-crafted Domino® Sugar brownie recipes to delight your friends and family.

1. Insist on quality ingredients

Avoid those box mixes and make brownies from scratch using the best ingredients you can find, starting with expertly crafted Domino® Sugar. You’ll be amazed what a difference it makes, and you’ll get sublime squares every time.

• Cocoa should be high in cacao, the compound that gives it its chocolate flavor.
• Chocolate in the form of disks or baking bars tends to melt better and more evenly than chips, so save those for cookies.
• Flour from a quality mill is key. Brownies are dense, and a good flour will help them rise fully and evenly.
  

2. Prepare with precision

When making brownies, it’s tempting to just toss everything into a bowl and mix away, but just a bit of care can take your brownies from good to great.

• Weigh, don’t scoop, for more exact measurements. Using a kitchen scale is the most accurate way to guarantee you’re adding the right amount of this and that, and the method preferred by professional bakers.
• Sift, beat & stir each step of the way. By creating a consistent mix of dry and wet ingredients before combining them, you’ll avoid lumps that can create an uneven batter.
• Add sugar when butter & chocolate are warm to encourage more thorough mixing, allowing all three essential ingredients to merge.

A 13 x 9 rectangular baking pan is a good place to start if your recipe doesn’t specify a size. And regardless of which pan you use, it helps to check your brownies for doneness with a dry toothpick a few minutes before they’re supposed to be done. If the toothpick comes out dry, you can remove them from the oven. If it’s still sticky, repeat every few minutes until it isn’t.

4. Craft your crust

Getting the perfect crust for you means choosing a recipe with just the right proportions of granulated and brown sugars.

• More brown sugar leads to dense brownies with incredible depth of flavor, but the additional moisture can cause their upper crust to be more solid than delicate as a result. If this is how you love your brownies, great.
• More granulated sugar creates a sweeter, slightly less dense batch of brownies that boasts a crust that’s comparatively dry. This helps to create the wavy, slightly crackled top favored by many.
  

There’s no wrong choice, just keep your sugar preference in mind and swing the pendulum between Domino® Pure Cane Dark Brown Sugar and Domino® Pure Cane Granulated Sugar in the direction you favor.

5. Cut with care

Brownies are moist, thick and rich. That’s great for eating but can make slicing them difficult. For perfectly cut brownies, try:

• Lining your pan with parchment paper so you can lift your entire batch (once it has cooled) of Marbled Peanut Butter Chocolate Brownies out onto a flat surface. This makes slicing far easier than trying to cut inside the pan.
• Using a plastic or ceramic knife as these materials can stick to your brownies’ moist insides less than a typical steel blade. Also, be sure to clean the knife between each cut so crumbs stuck to it don’t cause the next cut to drag.
• Skipping the knives entirely and using a large pizza-cutting wheel. The rolling action is smoother than slicing and can help make neat, even cuts. (Just be sure to clean it between cuts as well.)
• Letting brownies cool completely before attempting to cut them. Since they’re thick, brownies retain heat longer than thinner baked goods, so don’t be in too much of a hurry to start slicing.

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